Before the internet, nerds communicated through
Amateur Press Associations (APAs). Members wrote and photocopied their individual 'zines on a subject, then mailed them to a central mailer, who collated and mailed the completed sets to all the members. The earliest APAs were founded by printers and amateur journalists.
The National Amateur Press Association is the oldest, founded in 1876. Later APAs were often the province of science fiction and comic book fans. They are
still around [pdf]. A lot more inside...
[more inside]
posted by marxchivist
on Aug 2, 2010 -
12 comments
The Zine Library has
hundreds of zines in pdf format for your perusal. They are organized into categories ranging from the common political (
anarchism,
political prisoners &
animal liberation) and identity based zines (
indigenous,
race &
gender) to the more esoteric (
anarchist history,
primitivism &
theory) as well as the useful (
cooking,
DIY &
organizing manuals) and arty (
art,
comics &
music). Now, zines are by their very nature hit and miss but there are some real treasures to be found. I recommend these three:
[all links pdf] The Rebel's Dark Laughter - The Writings of Bruno Filippi,
Barefoot in the Kitchen and
Delivery from Below, Resistance from Above - Electricity and the Politics of Struggle in Tembisa, South Africa. Note: Many if not most zines are set up to be printed out and bound together in chapbooks. That requires a bit of going back and forth when reading in pdf-format, but they wouldn't be real zines if they were straightforward to read ;) Don't know what a zine is? A pretty good overview is provided by zine librarian Jenna Freedman in
Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis.
[This site has been posted previously but was buried deep in the weeds of more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 10, 2009 -
16 comments
